User comments - Are they really beneficial?

Michael

Michael

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I'm debating on whether I should just completely disable comments from my site as I can't see (much) of an advantage at this point. I am doing a technology review website, so it MAY make sense to have them enabled.
What's everyone's opinions?

Advantages
  • Gives impression of a popular / authoritative site
  • Lets my audience voice their opinion and get involved (but then again how's this benefiting me?)
  • ???
Disadvantages
  • One additional entry point for hackers
  • Dealing with spam
  • Additional time involved moderating comments
  • Leaking link juice?
 
I don't use them.

An absence of comments forces visitors to judge the site based on content, and mine is leagues beyond everyone else in the vertical.

I also prefer for that conversation to take place on social media. I'm not saying I'm the master of getting that to happen.

Of course there are cons as well. Leaking juice isn't one of them. You can make it so no visitor can post a link.

I definitely don't want to deal with moderating them and having my database filled with spam to be deleted.

Mainly though, I just don't want to deal with it. I don't want it as a distraction from my content and my opinion that is meant to persuade. And I don't want to not approve comments because they are dissenters, etc. I'd rather just keep the lid on it altogether and keep my funnel tight.
 
Ryuzaki said:
I don't use them.

An absence of comments forces visitors to judge the site based on content, and mine is leagues beyond everyone else in the vertical.

I also prefer for that conversation to take place on social media. I'm not saying I'm the master of getting that to happen.

Of course there are cons as well. Leaking juice isn't one of them. You can make it so no visitor can post a link.

I definitely don't want to deal with moderating them and having my database filled with spam to be deleted.

Mainly though, I just don't want to deal with it. I don't want it as a distraction from my content and my opinion that is meant to persuade. And I don't want to not approve comments because they are dissenters, etc. I'd rather just keep the lid on it altogether and keep my funnel tight.
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Advantages?
- Don't some of the comment plugins offer the user the ability to be notified when someone replies to their comment? I just set up WPdiscuz and it seems to do that. I would think getting the user back to the site to click more ads would be a good thing if your main monetary goal is ads on your site.

Disadvantages?
- Leaking juice. I wasn't aware that links from the comment section did this. Would a few outgoing links from users really take away from internal link juice you're sending to another of your pages?
 
Does anyone here use Facebook comments on their site?

I like the fact that they can be concurrently posted to the commentator's timeline. Seems like it could be a nice supplementary stream of traffic, assuming they keep the "post to Facebook" box checked.
 
A disadvantage of using the Facebook comment system is that not every person is on facebook so you would be alienating some users. It may only be a small percentage but it's worth considering.
 
Anyone allowing comments have data on comment rate on a reasonable sample?

I've always kind of half-assumed that for like 99% of sites any traffic etc consideration would be absolutely irrelevant? SEO&social algorithm impact? Have no idea - guess there's not much downside?
 
Yeah I don't have comments on my sites only because I do receive so much junks ... I just wish people wise up and realize that junk comments aren't to be approved and waste of your time to place comments even if you just use scrapebox for that - still more energies to post junks than to post few thoughtful comments on great site of choice
 
I use a plugin called Cleantalk which costs about $7 a year and is really effective at keeping spam out.
 
I allow comment. Comments aid the freshness factor of the page and I noticed all the pages with active comments versus pages no comments on blogposts all have high positions in the rankings. Disqus is excellent for this.
 
azswe said:
@CCarter Interesting, how much have you researched causality or more a general observation?
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Analytics and monitoring the individual URLs within SERPWoo. I know the top blogposts and the ones that rank the highest have the most comments. Here is the alternative theory: perhaps they also rank high because they are great pieces of content and therefore would naturally lead to more engagement from users by commenting shared, and linking. Maybe the pages that do not rank high are because they aren't that hot and therefore the lack of comments show there is no "engagement benefit" for users for that content piece.

So at the very least comments help you gauge which content pieces are hitting home with your audience and which content pieces are just overall weak sauce. So if you don't do it for the freshness benefit at the very least do it for the gauging your audience so you can create more content around the topics people will love, share, link back to, and talk about within your industry versus trying to guess with analytics and times on site. Directly talking to your customers/visitors is more beneficial than guessing.

If the real dilemma is "leaking" of comments to other places, the reality is people can press the back button on their browser, and most likely have a couple of other tabs open up that will pull them away from your site. If I see a great piece of content and there is another link I want to also see I tend to right click and open the new link in a new tab. If your overall site and/or content is weak I'm going to leave no matter what, without clicking an AD or doing a conversion that drives in revenue to you.

From my viewpoint the benefits of having comments outweigh the potential negatives.
 
I like the idea of using Facebook for comments because it should keep the spam low while giving the impression that your site is popular like the OP mentioned. Sure, not everybody is on Facebook, but I don't think it's that big of a deal. There's also things like Disqus which was already mentioned.
 
Comments are absolutely beneficial in many ways - for contributing fresh and up-to-date content (which helps SEO), having a conversation and discussing solutions to problems, ideas, etc., just like we are here in this forum. It's engaging and encourages people to keep coming back to your site.

There are many sites I visit regularly just because of the content I read in the comments section - people discussing their experiences with a particular product or service.

I don't care how long and in-depth your article is... it will never cover and answer every single question your reader has. No matter how much of an authority you think you are. Especially in this case when it comes to technology product reviews. For example, go look at the comments section at http://thewirecutter.com - there are 1,000 comments on some of those articles.

The Disqus and the Facebook plugin will cover the majority of your visitors and help cut down the spam and noise drastically.
 
CCarter said:
I know the top blogposts and the ones that rank the highest have the most comments.
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I agree with this and the reasons you mentioned. I had an interactive post in an extremely competitive niche climb to #2 based on the number of comments. It was breaking 500 before I sold that site, but I definitely think it works like an "engagement factor" almost like social signals.

I'm not sure I agree with you guys on the freshness factor though. Google knows what is the main content and the comment section. But it does prove that the content is very relevant to the user base.
 
Tucky said:
A disadvantage of using the Facebook comment system is that not every person is on facebook so you would be alienating some users. It may only be a small percentage but it's worth considering.
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I have a facebook but I actually prefer to be more anonymous when commenting on articles etc. So it would definitely alienate me.

I have an adult site that gets a lot of comments for particular things...and its ranking have remained strongly on page one despite no backlinks. From the comments, it is definitely seen they are definitely seen as authority pieces as I am frequently asked my opinion and what to do when there is an issue with the products!
I have relied solely on social cues to be able to keep that site ranked, so I think they are beneficial if you feel limited on other aspects such as link building.
 
I link comments on articles to the FB page, so when someone comments on FB it appears on the article on the site and vice versa.
 
Personally, I think user comments is great (as long as you can monitor and contain it, and it actually provides value for your visitors).

If you can meet the requirements above, then it's most likely very beneficial for your website, for the user experience, and for Google to increase your rankings!
 
I don't use user comments due to the amount of spam. If they want to comment they are welcome to on Facebook or Twitter. Just naturally seems to work best this way I've found.
 
Ranking wise, comments act like a social proof and are considered similar to facebook shares for example (which is not much).
Watch out for too many comments on the same page, it can break your load time and mess with your overall keyword density.
Some Wordpress themes have good comment sections, and if you are doing affiliate or review type of sites they even allow you to post user reviews in comment section (with rating stars and everything). Rehub Theme is the one I like with those features.
On my main brand website I only use regular comments and always leave them on, people post a lot of new ideas and solutions, which is nice.

Hope this helps :smile:
 
Nemanja said:
...Watch out for too many comments on the same page, it can break your load time and mess with your overall keyword density.
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If it's true that comments can affect keyword density, then wouldn't it make sense that Google would discount keyword density because of this?

If the publisher has no control over his keyword density, then it doesn't make sense to give this much weight when determining rank.
 
Hey Finnegan,

I agree with you, Google is giving less value to keywords in blog comments although if heavily spammed it can trigger overoptimization especially on word level.
 
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